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Clare Malone

Clare Malone is a freelance writer and member of the editorial staff of The New Yorker.Her work has appeared in The American Prospect, The Daily Beast, Slate, Bloomberg View, and Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology. She is a former Prospect web editor.

Recent Articles

Cold War nostalgia is hot these days. Everyone who's anyone is watching The Americans , FX's taut drama about Soviet sleeper cell spies living in the the suburbs of Washington, D.C., during the 1980s, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their kids by day and carrying out hits by night. Vladimir Putin got geopolitcally retro with his annexation of Crimea recently. And today we learn that there is some good old-fashioned spy bargaining afoot! The New York Times reports that in a bid to ensure that the Israeli-Palestinean peace talks stay alive through 2015, the U.S. and Israel are negotiating the release of Jonathan Pollard, a former American Naval intelligence analyst who was convicted of giving secrets to the Israeli government. Which got us thinking about our favorite spy stories through the years ... Since we've been watcing the aforementioned The Americans , we'll kick off with the Russian agents. There's of course The Rosenbergs—Ethel and Julius —who were executed for...

In January, President Obama gave a speech at the Justice Department that was basically an acknowledgement that the shady ex-girlfriend stuff that the NSA has been doing to Americans, like going through our phone records and mining our internet activity, was indeed pretty damn shady. He promised, in that vague way that politicians do, to take some action. Well, this week is action central! On Friday , the court order that authorizes the NSA's current data-collection program expires, and the administration wants to initiate a new process, via legislation, that would, in the words of Spencer Ackerman of The Guardian , "significantly curtail the practice [of mass phone data monitoring] but lower the legal standards for the collection of such information." The New York Times has the details : "The N.S.A. would end its systematic collection of data about Americans’ calling habits. The bulk records would stay in the hands of phone companies, which would not be required to retain the data for...

Diplomatic hell broke out this weekend when the citizens of Crimea, the southwestern region of Ukraine at the center of a standoff between Russia and the West, voted to secede and join Russia . Today, Russian President Vladimir Putin formally reclaimed Crimea and gave a speech which The New York Times characterized as "emotional" : “'Crimea has always been an integral part of Russia in the hearts and minds of people,' Mr. Putin declared in his address, delivered in the chandeliered St. George’s Hall inside the Kremlin before hundreds of members of Parliament, governors and others. His remarks, which lasted 47 minutes, were interrupted repeatedly by thunderous applause, standing ovations and at the end chants of 'Russia, Russia.' Some in the audience wiped tears from their eyes." Needless to say, U.S. politicians are not amused by Putin's antics. Speaking from Poland on his solidarity tour of NATO allies, Vice President Joe Biden called the move "nothing more than a land grab" by the...

In 2014 we are used to stories that have neatly-defined, if contradicting narratives, and which resolve themselves relatively quickly, fading into the ether. Which is what makes the story of the Malaysia Airlines flight that has been missing for a week such an engrossing one. The narratives are muddled, the experts all seem to be at a loss, and no one's quite sure what the exact facts of the case are. Recent developments have thrown things even more into doubt, and into a place of speculation about possible dark motivations behind the plane's disappearance. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal citing unnamed sources "briefed on the matter," Flight 370 flew for five hours at a normal crusing altitude and was in touch with satellites after it lost contact with civilian radar. "The satellites also received speed and altitude information about the plane from its intermittent 'pings,' the people said. The final ping was sent from over water, at what one of these people called...

We know you've all been waiting for it. Counting down the days and hours like a kid to Christmas morning or a virgin to prom night. And it's finally here—the president's budget. The big doc filled with $3.901 trillion of proposed government programs dropped this morning, and in contrast to years past, the White House is not throwing any bones to the Republicans. As The New York Times writes , "Republican opposition will again probably block most proposals, but Democrats hope the debate will sharpen the contrasts between the parties’ views of government’s role in society, to their political advantage." Among the proprosals contained in the budget are greater tax breaks for law-wage workers without children, additional spending on preschool programs, the NIH, and climate research. Politico has conveniently put together a pictorial slideshow of the budget for those visual learners out there. To pay for these proposals? Yeah, you guessed it, the budget goes after tax loopholes the wealthy...